Testimony
by Harmony Sunsinger
Summary: Kagome takes the witness stand in her trial against the organization HAI, Humans Against Immortality, for kidnapping her and experimenting on her against her wishes just because she isn't quite human.


Testimony.

An Inuyasha one-shot by Harmony Sunsinger.

A/N: If this does well on here, than I'll do a full story. This is an idea that I've had bouncing around, and I'd really like to make it into a fully written, original novel, but I'll have to work out a ton of kinks. I'd like to work out the kinks by writing this into a fanfiction.

So. Hope you like it.

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Kagome sighed, brushing her long, wavy, ebony hair back behind her shoulders as she approached the witness stand. The courtroom was a large one, and it was completely full; her attorney, Jessica Whitaker, stood in front of her, watching with a small, reassuring smile as she was sworn in. Kagome glanced behind Jessica to the remaining seats behind the plaintiff's table; there were her boys, smiling sweetly at her.

"Miss Taisho," Jessica started, approaching the stand slowly, "what year were you born in?"

Kagome couldn't contain her bright smile as she answered, "February twentieth."

"Of what year?"

She paused. "1993."

There were hushed murmurs in the crowded courtroom, and the jury looked more than a little stunned by her reply.

The attorney feigned confusion as she faced the jury. "But it's the year 2189. How on Earth could you be so old?"

Kagome shifted in her seat. "Well, the first recorded Immortal was born in 1979 in North Africa. He wasn't discovered until 2004, when I was eleven. I remember, because my father, rest his soul, was keenly interested in the new development."

"And why was he so interested?"

She leaned forward a little. "Because he was a biochemist."

Jessica smiled. "And your father, Dr. Sachi Higurashi, was the one to proclaim you an Immortal as well, correct?"

"That is correct." Kagome watched Inuyasha and Shippo as they kept grinning at her. She finally grinned back.

"And, in all your years, have you _ever_ been known to cause harm?" Jessica asked. "To anyone?"

Kagome quickly shook her head. "No, ma'am, I have not. I respect human life, as up until the age of twenty, I was a part of it."

"And what does that mean?"

The Immortal woman on the stand sighed. "This story gets _so_ old," she mumbled, and there were a couple of laughs from the crowd and jury. Inuyasha's eyes darted around the room; he knew that those who had laughed must be Immortal; not many humans could've picked up on Kagome's softly spoken words. "When I was twenty years old," Kagome stated in a normal voice, "I was driving to the local community college. On my way there, a Mack truck ran a red light, and it hit the driver's side of my car."

"Was there much damage?"

"Yes," Kagome said her tone and face full of regret, "my poor car did not survive."

More scattered laughter.

Jessica chuckled. "No, no, Mrs. Taisho," she said. "I mean, was there much damage to _you_?"

Kagome's eyes widened for a fraction of a second before she responded, "Oh. Sorry. Yes, my left leg and arm were both broken, and I had a concussion. The doctors were honestly astounded that it wasn't worse."

"And exactly how quickly did you recover from those injuries?"

Kagome's face scrunched as she mentally did the math. "About four hours, tops."

More hushed murmurs.

Jessica seemed astounded (though her clients knew better). "How on Earth could that have been possible?"

Kagome laughed. "That's exactly what my father said. Afterwards, the hospital wanted to observe me, use me for research, that sort of thing. But I politely declined. However, when I was about thirty-five, my father noticed that I yet to age from a twenty-year-old… So I let him start his research."

"And what was his finding?"

She took a deep breath. "That I was the fifth Immortal to be discovered worldwide."

"Let me ask you this, Mrs. Taisho," Jessica said, stepping forward somewhat. The defense attorney honestly looked, to Kagome, very bored at this moment. "I'm sure that most of the people around the world, in this courtroom, and in the jury are quite puzzled by what you are describing to us. I mean, the image that we in this younger generation have of Immortals is that they are super-tough, super-strong, super-fast, and that they have super-senses, like super-hearing and super-smell. The only thing that you seem to have in common with these Immortals is the fact that you don't age and you heal at an exponential rate. How do you explain this?"

Kagome thought over her words before answering, "Well, as I said, I was the fifth Immortal to be discovered worldwide. That means that I am a first-generation Immortal; I was born to a pair of human parents who both carried the mutated gene that is responsible for Immortality."

Jessica paused a moment, waiting for Kagome to continue. When she didn't, the attorney nodded to her, pacing once more. "Please, Mrs. Taisho, go on."

"The Immortals that everyone hears about in the news or sees on television are the second-generation, the ones that were born to an Immortal parent and a human." Hesitating, Kagome added, "My husband is part of the second-generation."

Jessica focused her blue eyes on Kagome once again. "Your husband?" she asked, walking slowly over to the plaintiff's table, her black stilettos clacking against the shiny, marble floor loudly. She gestured to Inuyasha, who was still sitting there at the table. He raised his shoulders slightly when Jessica brought attention to him; Kagome knew that he hated the limelight, and he was trying to hide from the judging eyes of the court. "You mean, Mr. Inuyasha Taisho?" she asked.

"Yes."

"You mean the man that you met at a grocery store in 2042? The man that you dated for thirty-one years before finally marrying? The man that you have been _in love with_ for more than 116 years?"

"Yes."

"The man that you have had a beautiful young son, Shippo, with?"

Kagome smiled brightly, her eyes connecting with Shippo's bright green ones. The boy smiled back at her; he looked so happy just to see her once again. "Yes," she answered.

"You mean the man who used his super-toughness and his super-strength and super-speed and super-senses to find you when you had been kidnapped by the defendants?"

Kagome swallowed hard, as the hard part of her testimony was just about to begin. "Yes."

"Tell me, Mrs. Taisho," Jessica continued, "how long were you in the captivity of the defendants, Humans Against Immortality?"

The woman sighed. "For seven months."

"And how did the defendants treat you during this time?"

"_Quite_ inhumanely," Kagome countered, throwing a vehement glare at Kyle Takahashi, who sat beside the defense attorney. Kyle showed her no emotion. "They kept me locked in a small, bright room, and there was only a bed, a bathtub, and a toilet in it. Part of one of the walls was glass; I knew that it was a one-way mirror. I knew that they were watching me… all of the time… _observing_ me, like some lab-rat!" Tears suddenly sprang to her warm, brown eyes, the eyes Jessica knew would win over the jury in a heartbeat with their intense, puppy-dog look.

The attorney fixed a hard look on her face, despite her inner excitement over her client's tears. "Go on, Kagome."

Mildly surprised at hearing Jessica call her by her first name for the first time since her testimony had started, Kagome blinked a couple times before continuing. "They never saw fit to feed me; they only provided water, and that was sometimes shortlived. One of their experiments on me was to see how long I could survive without it, but that didn't last for more than couple of days. Once they started giving me fluids again, I improved, but not much. I lost a ton of weight during those seven months; they didn't give me anything to eat _once_."

Kagome didn't dare look at her husband throughout this part of the testimony; he no doubt had a very stunned, angry, and troubled look on his face. She didn't want to see him glowering at Kyle, nor did she want to see tears filling his own violet eyes. She didn't want to see his look of horror or pity or self-shame that she was sure would be taking up residence on his face.

She swallowed, taking a very deep, calming breath. "But I survived. I survived the starvation; I survived their usually painful injections and tests. I survived the embarrassment and the shame and the loneliness. I survived it all."

Jessica paused for a moment, letting all of her client's words sink in to the jury and the judge before she turned on her heel, saying, "No more questions."

Very slowly, the defense attorney stood. "Mrs. Taisho," he started rather loudly. Kagome gave him a very annoyed look. "Do you know how the dictionary defines a human?"

Inuyasha snorted from where he sat, arms crossed, still at the plaintiff's table. He rolled his eyes as everyone in the courtroom turned, their eyes trained on him. "As if," he said rather loudly. There were gasps and scattered laughter; Kagome giggled as the judge slammed his gavel down on the bench hard, its clear sound reverberating through the courtroom just as loudly as Inuyasha's snort had. "Order!" the judge called. He looked down at Kagome once the room had silenced once more. "Please answer the question, Mrs. Taisho," he requested placidly.

"No," Kagome said, looking straight at the defense attorney once more. "I am 196 years old, and I haven't read the dictionary since I was thirteen."

"Ah," the man said, nodding to her and facing the jury. "The latest edition of Taylor's Dictionary defines a human as a 'member of the species _Homo sapiens_ and whom lives and dies.'"

Suddenly very angry, Kagome burst out, "No! That's not right!"

"Oh, believe me, it is, Mrs. Taisho!" the defense attorney retorted, shoving a very thick, open book underneath her nose. "Here it is! Right there, in the middle of the page!"

"Objection!" Jessica cried out, standing; the boys beside her looked outraged at the defense attorney's antics.

"But this is wrong!" Kagome exclaimed as the slimeball attorney stepped back, smirking. The judge hit his gavel on the bench a few times, once more demanding order, but Kagome couldn't stop now. "No, your honor! This is _wrong_! When I was thirteen, we used Webster's Dictionary, and it defined a human being as 'a person, especially as distinguished from other animals or as representing the human species' – it did _not_ say _anything_ about living and dying!"

"I have to agree with my client, your honor," Jessica said. "It has been speculated in the past that Taylor's Dictionary was biased in their definition of a human being."

"But every single one of the abortion cases in the past, your honor, has ruled that a fetus is not elevated to the status of an infant until it takes that first breath, that first real proof of life," the defense attorney argued. "One of the biggest parts of human life is dealing with one's own mortality. These Immortals don't have to grow through the fear that we have. If a fetus isn't a child until it breathes, how can a person be called a person unless they can share in this most important human task? Unless they can atone with their own mortality?"

"I have atoned with my own _Immortality_, counselor," Kagome practically spit at him.

"But that isn't the point of my argument, Mrs. Taisho," the attorney went on. "Do you fear death?"

"As a matter of fact, I do."

At Jessica's side, Inuyasha paled. He knew exactly what his wife was about to bring up… and he knew that their case was as good as won.

"But how can that be, Mrs. Taisho?" the defense attorney asked, looking at the jury. "You haven't died, nor will you ever die. How can you _possibly _fear something that you will never experience?"

"But I _have _experienced it."

He stopped right in his tracks, soaking in that dropped bombshell as there were collected murmurs in the jury and the rest of the courtroom. Slowly, he turned to look directly at Kagome. "You _what_?"

She smirked cockily at him; her husband felt as though he were looking in a mirror. "I _said_, counselor, that I have, in fact, experienced death. It felt like hell."

The entire room had been stunned into silence. Then, the attorney spoke up, recovering from his bout of shock. "Oh, really. And exactly _when_ did you experience this?" he asked.

Without hesitation, Kagome answered, "March fourteenth, 2181. It was the same day Shippo was born. I died during childbirth; poor baby had such a hard time coming out into the world that he accidentally broke my spine and my pelvis. My heart and breathing stopped for twelve minutes, and I was proclaimed dead during that time. Afterward, my recovery was very slow and painful; my spine healed very slowly, and I suffered from complete renal and hepatic – kidney and liver – failure for about four hours. After two days, my pelvis was completely healed; after ten days, my spine was in better shape than it had been before I went into labor. There was no outside sign of trauma, no brain damage, no permanent harm done _at all_ when I left the hospital with my husband and new baby boy two weeks later."

The attorney was absolutely speechless by this point, as was the jury and the judge. Jessica sat at the plaintiff's table with Inuyasha and Shippo, and she grinned lightheartedly at Kagome's song and dance.

Finally, the defense attorney blinked and stammered, "Bu-But, your honor, wh-where is the pa-paperwork?"

"Right here, sir!" Everyone turned and looked at Jessica, who was cheerfully pulling a sheet of paper out of her briefcase. She walked up to the bench, the paper in hand, and said, "This is Kagome Taisho's original death certificate from 2181; I would like to submit it to the court as evidence."

"Bu-But, your honor-!"

"Now, now, counselor," the judge reprimanded quietly, taking the certificate from Jessica and reading over it, "if you are allowed to pull that kind of a stunt in _my_ courtroom, than ADA Whitaker is _more_ than allowed to pull _this_ kind of stunt in here." He read over the entire death certificate and nodded his approval. "I find that Mrs. Taisho had, indeed, experienced death; therefore, counselor, by your own words, she has met the 'requirements' for a human being."

The defense attorney jaw dropped; Inuyasha laughed victoriously, and Kyle Takahashi, president of HAI's Tokyo division, was fastly becoming agitated.

Defeated and out of ideas, the defense attorney let Kagome off of the stand, and she lightly walked back over to the plaintiff's table. As Jessica called the next witness, Kagome sat down beside her husband, reaching over him to take Shippo into her lap. She smiled brightly as Inuyasha hugged her shoulders, and she leaned back in her seat to enjoy the rest of the show, holding her beautiful, little boy close to her.

After all, they had all of eternity to play this tune.


End file.
